The 2015 US Trafficking Report: signs of decline?

The
US Trafficking in Persons Report exposes exploitation and holds governments to
account. But creeping politicisation and a reluctance to address the political
economy of TIP are compromising its credibility. Español

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The
past year will not be remembered as a great one in the history of the State
Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Its engaging,
consensus-building chief, Ambassador Lou CdeBaca unexpectedly stepped
aside in November, soon after his
Deputy was abruptly reassigned. In a delay that speaks volumes about the place
of trafficking within the broader US political agenda, President Obama only got
around to nominating Cdebaca's
successor last week. Even allowing for minimal delays in the
typically fraught Senate confirmation process, the tenure of Ambassador-to-be
Susan Coppedge is likely to be very short.

Such
instability is worrying. The Ambassador and his or her small team of
administrators and analysts are responsible for producing the annual
Trafficking in Persons Report, a detailed assessment of the performance of
every country in the world in combatting human trafficking. Strong leadership
is vital – very often the Ambassador must battle
State Department colleagues to ensure that the integrity of the assessments is
not seriously compromised by other priorities and concerns.

Since
it was first issued in 2001, the report has had an immense impact. Many
governments are deeply
offended at the US taking on the
role of global sheriff in relation to an issue as complex as human trafficking.
For countries ranked at the very bottom, at stake is more than a sense of
pride. A poor ranking automatically puts them under a black diplomatic cloud
and renders them subject to a range of economic sanctions.

The
reaction of the anti-trafficking community to the Reports has been mixed. A
general antipathy towards the US throwing its weight around and suspicion about
its own human rights credentials and motivations has prejudiced
many against the Reports. But others,
including
myself, have slowly come to appreciate the Report’s irreplaceable role in
exposing the long-hidden exploitation of human beings for private profit.
Governments that engage in, tolerate or benefit from such exploitation squirm
under this uncomfortable spotlight. In some cases the threat
of a bad ranking creates a genuine opening for change. Certainly in my
frontline work with criminal justice agencies I have come to appreciate that
the opportunity to help revise an evidence law; to work on developing interview
protocols that protect victims; to encourage fair trials for suspects, may not
have arisen if the countries I work with were not conscious of the US looking
on and judging their every move.

Earlier
this week Secretary of State Kerry launched
the fifteenth US TIP Report at a ceremony in Washington. It’s the biggest
one yet, and perhaps it is also the most overtly politicized. Malaysia has been
bumped off the bottom tier – apparently to facilitate
the Obama Administration’s flagship Transpacific Partnership trade deal -
despite little evidence of progress in that country’s troubling record of
inaction and complicity - and indeed the emergence of new
scandals that were disingenuously
brushed aside by the State Department as irrelevant because they came to
light only after the ‘cut-off date’ for the report. There was always a question
around the extent to which Cuba’s persistently bad rating was a reflection of
broader US policy. Cuba’s sudden upgrade, coming as it does during a period of
historic rapprochement with the US, appears to settle that question once and
for all. China continues to enjoy its long-standing, slap-on-the-wrist position
on the second-worst tier - thereby escaping sanctions that would be politically
and economically unpalatable – notwithstanding compelling
evidence of systemic exploitation
in a vast range of sectors. Myanmar, an integral factor in the US tilt to Asia,
had a similar escape, despite the Government’s failure to acknowledge – let
alone address - the trafficking and exploitation of its Rohingya
population.

But
after many years tracking the ups and downs of the US TIP Report, I’ve come to
the conclusion that its inevitable politicization, sweeping generalizations
(that, for example, see fit to rate Nepal and the United Arab Emirates equally)
and creeping ‘grade inflation’ are not the greatest problems. Much more
dangerous is the implicit and mistaken assumption that the Report tells us the
whole story of human exploitation. Like its methodologically
challenged would-be rival, the Global Slavery Index the TIP Report weaves a simple – and ultimately comforting - tale
of trafficking being about bad people doing bad things to good people. It fails
to seriously interrogate the deep economy of human exploitation – to ask what
would happen to global wealth and productivity if such exploitation were
suddenly removed. It ignores the role that labour migration regimes, weighted
heavily in favour of developed economies and big business, play in fueling
vulnerability to trafficking. It does not even try to explain why governments
are so willing to pass strong laws and so unwilling to implement them
effectively. Beyond a cursory reference to the now ubiquitous “global supply
chains”, corporate complicity in trafficking – and the government corruption
that makes this possible - isn’t even on the table.

The
task of unraveling the tangled political economy of human trafficking is an
urgent one: until we understand not just what
is happening but why, our responses
will inevitably be faulty and incomplete. It’s too much to expect the TIP Report
to shoulder the entire burden – other States, international institutions and an
increasingly active civil society all have an important role to play. But this
job will be made infinitely easier if the Report – the single most important
diplomatic initiative in this area –succeeds in reasserting its now-threatened
authority and credibility.

This article is an expanded version of the author's article published in the Guardian

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